Tedious, ungrammatical, unoriginal and tasteless crap from someone old enough to know better.

Wednesday, January 18, 2006

Penal Colonies

My friends at the BBC inform me, and frankly I am disappointed that Simon was not first with the news, that the Scottish Nationalist Party are pressing for the action on what are known as ‘rendition’ flights in Scotland.

Before I continue with the main thrust of this insightful and profound message, let me pause a moment to escort you down the byways of English usage. Rendition my elbow. The SNP should be protesting about the pilfering of a word, albeit a non-Gaelic one, to describe some quasi-new phenomenon that the world of professional journalism is too lazy to describe in more than one word. Balderdash, poppycock and piffle.

Pedantry aside, I am alarmed that terrorist suspects are being handled in this way. It is one thing to deliver them to languish in abject squalor in a pit in Tashkent, or suffer the agony of a regimented maximum security cell in Zurich, but to deliver them to Kirkcaldy, Kinlochleven or Kilmarnock is beyond credulity*. What are these people accused of that allows the civilised world to cause them to be subjected to bagpipe music, the poetry of Burns and salted porridge? What crime is considered so heinous as to be punishable by listening to the warblings of Andy Stewart, Lulu and Donovan?

This section intentionally left blank for the reader to insert their own unfunny racial stereotypes.

You don't need to go to Scotland to torture renditionees. Here in the Canaries we have been dragooned into a Burns night dinner, complete with haggis. And, I fear, a piper. Am just hoping they have not imported Moira Anderson.

Oh yes, you're all so quick to have a pop at Scotland. And truly can I blame you! Is there any other league in the world so boring as theirs?OK don't start - I don't beleive even the Welsh take any interest in their league. Total Network Solutions - what the hell is that all about!